The 100K Challenge: Day 26 Update + the impact of keyword “Not Provided”

An update on the blogging challenge to achieve 100,000 visits in a month.

How It’s Going So Far

At this point, I don’t think there is any chance I’ll get to 100,000 visits when the challenge ends in five more days.

If you asked me “am I glad I did the blogging challenge”, I think “yes”.  I’ve learned a lot which will be useful for my blog in future, my clients and also this Grassroots blog.  And I know I gave it my best shot.

Looking at the “Compare to Past” stats for the first 26 days of the blogging challenge, compared to last year, there has been a 253% increase in traffic (33,614 visits this year compared to 9,518 last year).

47% of the months traffic last year came in in the last five days of January. I do expect a spike in traffic in the next few days but I don’t think that it will be that big.

Keyword “Not Provided”

One thing that has changed between this year and last year in terms of identifying keywords that are bringing organic traffic to my blog is the “not provided” keyword in Google Analytics. This occurs if people are logged in to a Google account when they search in Google and then click through to your blog.  More and more keywords are showing up as “not provided”

Here’s a screen shot from last year’s organic traffic, when 776 visits were “not provided’ out of 14,232 total visits. Around 5%.

This year so far during the blogging challenge 4,839 keywords are “Not Provided” out of a total of 20,882 organic visits. Around 23%.

Find out more about keywords that are “Not Provided” in Google Analytics

I’ll be back next week with the final update on the blogging challenge and more insights that I’ve learned along the way.